"The US will share vaccines as soon as it can”. This is the reassurance offered to the EU by the American president, Joe Biden, who attended the European Council as a guest on Thursday to work with Brussels on the anti-Covid strategy. The number one of the White House also guaranteed that his administration is working "to remove bottlenecks to increase the production capacity of drugs" against the coronavirus. "Europe and America together, an alliance between democracies - added Biden - will demonstrate in practice that we are more effective than authoritarian regimes on issues such as human rights and cybersecurity". The US president thus seeks to renew the Atlantic alliance, frayed by Trump, to prevent Europe from getting closer to China or Russia.
A call to unity which the German chancellor, Angela Merkel put a stop to in the evening: "With the USA we have common basic values, this is indisputable", but in Europe "we also have our interests". Starting with the construction of the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline, opposed by the Americans precisely because it will link Germany and Russia.
On vaccines, however, the Union is in disarray and American help is indispensable at this point, considering that only 4,1% of the European population has been vaccinated so far. One thinks especially of gods licensed manufacturing agreements that allow the vaccines patented by American multinationals to be manufactured in European companies. Also possible new agreements on the supply of components for vaccines.
In front of Biden and the European heads of state and government, the Italian premier Mario Draghi he pointed his finger at them defaulting pharmaceutical companies, emphasizing that "European citizens feel that they have been deceived by some" drug multinationals. On this issue, the president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, clarified in a press conference that "AstraZeneca must first of all recover" on the doses agreed with the EU "and honor the contract with the Member States before being able to commit again in the export of vaccines”.
Draghi also raised two very sensitive issues: the need to draw one common European tax policy that it is able to bring the Union out of the crisis and the importance of create real Eurobonds, a “long-term objective on which it is important to have a political commitment”.
